I do hope so - I don't believe batteries are the long term future, the supposed 'breakthrough' never comes and is always five to ten years away. In the meantime, used batteries are a huge pollution problem.
But isn't the commercial production of Hydrogen a very big user of electric power during the process?
Today it's mostly produced from methane, which doesn't use much electricity but does make it a contributor to climate change. Renewable energy is mostly unpredictable and could be used to generate hydrogen electrically at times when there is a surplus, instead of storing it in batteries or other means or just wasting it. But most countries are some way off having enough renewable to make that possible.
Thank you for that explanation, it certainly was not what I had led to believe.
www.alexander-dennis.com
Power for either electrolysis or batteries comes from the electricity supply network. If this is fully decarbonized then, by definition, neither option produces any CO2 while in operation. However if the grid isn't decarbonized then the hydrogen option will produce more CO2, because more of the energy is wasted by converting to hydrogen and back than by charging and discharging a battery. If the availability of electricity is limited then batteries are better because by the same argument they use less of it.
I always thought Bio Gas wasn't as green as made out, but when you think about it, it is quite green. 1st the gas from food/green waste/sewage will always be there. 2nd burning it is a more environmentally friendly option compared to simply releasing it into the atmosphere.
Absolutely. It strikes me as very green especially as the methane would otherwise go into the atmosphere were molecule for molecule it causes far more heating than CO2. This is unlike biodiesel which is often made from crops that would otherwise be available to eat*, and biomass which seems to have to be shipped from the States for use in the UK. Some sewage works now capture the methane and put it into a modified internal combustion engine to supply much of the power needs of the works itself.
Indeed the only question with it, is how much methane is produced and would it meet the demand?
Nottingham is running 120 gas buses and I believe they use the methane output of Nottingham's main sewage works (not directly - the methane is put into the general gas network and the same amount taken out elsewhere for fueling the buses). I'm not sure if they use all of it but if so it suggests that the population of a city wouldn't generate enough methane to power all of its bus fleet.
www.nctx.co.uk
Thank you all for the input, I feel I have learnt a lot from the posts and not too much negativity for a change. Thanks.
It's got very little energy in it for volume so has to be kept under a lot of pressure. That makes it more difficult to handle and move. Reliability is always going to be poor early on with any technology especially when there are low numbers involved. This is as much to do with the people using or maintaining the technology as it is about the technology itself, however once numbers go up the issues are usually resolved.
However the hydrogen vehicle also requires a hydrogen tank, which being a pressure vessel is presumably quite heavy. Also fuel cells aren't good at rapid changes in output as are needed on a vehicle, so tend to be hybridised with a small battery. Do these mean that the equivalent hydrogen bus would end up being heavier?
Although there has been a development there and if employed it would solve three problems at once, higher storage, less room and lower pressure.
I think this is due to it being easier and cheaper at the moment, although gas buses are becoming more popular because although the start up costs are high and bus costs are higher, the day to day costs are lower and it helps of emissions targets especially in cities. I just can never see electric being the long term ultimate solution, as you would need more buses to maintain a service.
Why? The Capacity of recent electric buses are equal to other propulsion methods and the range is rapidly becoming similar, especially where opportunity charging is used.
) without the climate change deniers and Leyland National Fan Club Enthusiasts Association Group 
coming out in full force against it without good reasons.Seems to me if you have biogas you should make use of it directly, at least in the short term. Converting it into something else would reduce efficiency and biogas seems to be much closer to commercial viability than hydrogen (on the link I posted above it says the buses are cheaper to run than diesel, they just needed subsidy to buy them and probably to install the filling station). And bio-methane doesn't need to be transported, as it's just the same as normal methane so the provider pumps it into the nearest gas main and the user takes out the same amount from somewhere else on the gas supply network. Biogas can be used in a nearly normal internal combustion engine, but perhaps hydrogen in a fuel cell is more efficient? But I seem to remember there are also fuel cells that use methane.